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SOTF Mini Behavioral Rules
Respectful Behavior on SOTF Mini and Related Sites SOTF Mini is a large community with members from a wide range of backgrounds, and as such it is natural that conflict may arise. We request that members handle disagreements maturely and civilly, without resorting to insults or personal attacks. This holds true even if someone insults you first; in such cases, report the problem to the staff team, which will decide what action needs to be taken. Retaliating weakens your case, and if you strike back incorrectly or out of proportion with the initial slight, you may end up the one in trouble. Listen to staff members. If a staff member says to stop doing something, stop doing it. If you have concerns about their ruling, do not argue it in the moment; instead, appeal to staff as a whole. To do so, contact any staffer and let them know that you want to lodge an official complaint. Do not link to pornography (real life or animated) or to real life violence. A bloody anime fight or a clip from Saw would be fine assuming you warned other members what was coming; a video of a real life soldier getting blown up by an IED would not. Violating this rule is potentially grounds for an immediate ban, because many of our members are minors and it’s something Zetaboards and our community take very seriously. If you must share porn, do it through AIM, Skype, email, or something else totally unrelated to our site. If it’s off our site, we don’t care. There are tons of places to get, share, and discuss pornography on the internet. We are not one of them, no matter how into it all involved parties may be. SOTF as a site respects the gender identities and sexual orientations of its members, and requires that all members do the same. You’re not going to get in trouble if you accidentally misgender someone—it happens—but if a pattern of disrespectful behavior becomes clear we will crack down quickly and severely. Similarly, racism, sexism, and religious discrimination are not okay and have no place in our community. While characters may be racist, sexist, homophobic, etc., we require that none of our members act as such on our site. There are a few special rules regarding the Discord server and the Wiki, outlined below. Chat Rules: Our Discord server enforces a strict code of conduct, as follows: *If someone asks you to stop doing something offensive, comply with their request. If you suspect but are not completely sure that you are being inoffensive, knock it off anyways. If you think you're being harmless, be prepared to explain why to the staff should the situation escalate. *If you have an issue with someone's behavior, ask them to stop. If this doesn't work, report it to staff. If you escalate the situation or retaliate, you will share responsibility if/when the staff does get involved. *Criticism of characters/expression of opinions is allowed. We are a writing site, after all. Relentless mocking of characters is not. That's what PMs are for, if you really must do it. We want all our writers to feel welcome and safe in chat. Saying, "I do not like character X because their reactions are unrealistic and they seem lacking in emotional depth," is fine. Saying, "Character Y's dumb and gonna start eating corpses now, 'cause he's the Blood Boy of Program!" is not. If you're unclear on the line, ask someone else's opinion. *Listen to the staff. We're not tyrants. We are here to make sure all the members of the site feel welcome. If that means telling our friends to calm down, we will do it. It's nothing personal. If you ignore staff, you may be kicked or temporarily banned from the channel at will. *Violation of the chat rules may result in temporary or permanent suspensions from the chat, the site, or both. Wiki Rules: The Wiki is a place where you are allowed to express your opinions of characters, including negative opinions. However, we ask that you still frame these opinions respectfully. We also ask that you sign any comment you leave. We’ve had past incidents of members hiding behind anonymity to insult and flame each other’s writing. This is totally unacceptable. Any anonymous comments, good or bad, will either be removed or, if their author can be determined, that information will be attached to them by staff. The Wiki is primarily an informational resource. We have a sense of humor, and making jokes is fine, so long as these jokes are constrained to non-informational parts of the Wiki. You can make jokes on member pages, comments sections, and circumstantially in the trivia section. Do not insert jokes into the summary sections of pages. Do not delete other members contributions to the Wiki unless they fall outside the rules or are factually incorrect. If you do not use the Wiki responsibly, your editing privileges may be revoked. Minimum Age for SOTF Mini Members We require all members of SOTF Mini to be at least thirteen years of age for several reasons. First off, our site tends to feature content which would, at a minimum, be considered PG-13. While we understand that some children are more mature than others, thirteen is the age at which the board software allows us to draw the line. This ties to the second reason: to participate in SOTF requires an account, and accounts may only be freely registered by individuals of thirteen years of age or more. There is a way to bypass this, but it involves parents filling out paperwork and sending it to the Zetaboards staff, which is far too complicated a process to be worth allowing for something that probably shouldn’t happen anyways for the reasons mentioned above. As such, the board automatically bans accounts registered with underage birthdays. Should a member be discovered to be lying about their age and actually be under thirteen years old, they will be immediately banned, and this ban will not be lifted even when they turn thirteen. We are very serious about this. If you are still a minor in your country, but are older than thirteen, we request that you exercise good judgment and discretion when participating in our site. Don’t do anything that wouldn’t be okay with your parents. Recognize if the time isn’t right for you to participate in our site. We will always be here later. SOTF Mini Policy on Honesty Regarding Personal Information Due to the way Mini’s community functions, and to various incidents over the years, the following rules are in effect regarding personal information and the sharing thereof on the site: *Nobody is ever required to share information. If a member requests information and the request is denied, that's fine, and the member choosing not to reveal their information should not be harassed. If you want to make up a fake name for use on the site, that is fine as long as you let everyone know it's not your real name. That's a perfectly acceptable part of internet privacy, just let us know you're taking these precautions. *Any information you choose to share should be true. Should it come out that you have lied, that will be a bannable offense. We're being very hard-line on this because SOTF is a close-knit community. We've had members meet offline often. Romantic relationships have started through the site. Dishonesty represents a serious problem, possibly even one that goes beyond a betrayal of trust to affect offline safety of our members. This is an area in which we cannot compromise. *SOTF respects that gender identity is not an easy or simple subject. This policy in no way obligates transgender, gender-questioning, or genderqueer members to disclose that they fall into any of these categories. It does, however, mean that masquerading as a gender you do not identify as will be treated like any other lying. (Note that this also in no way obligates anyone to come out before they're comfortable doing so. We understand that this is a process, and staying closeted until you're comfortable is expressly not a violation of this policy.) *Similarly, deception through misdirection or "guessing games" is also forbidden. If you wish to keep your personal information private, that is fine. Do not, however, use it to tease or entice other members. Do not attempt to convey incorrect impressions. Do not lie through omission or implication. All of these things, depending on the incident and context, may be subject to the same punishment as any other lying. *This policy does not mean you can't joke around in chat or be humorously dishonest. The key thing here is, everyone needs to quickly find out that you're joking. As an example, a well-established handler claiming to be the opposite of who they truly are in chat as a brief joke is okay because everyone knows the truth and it's easily verifiable. Running jokes are okay. Attempts at legitimate misdirection are not. If in doubt, ask the staff; we keep member confidentiality in all cases where it is not a matter of individual or community safety. SOTF Mini Policy on Multiple Accounts On SOTF Mini, members are not allowed to have multiple accounts simultaneously active. This is because we only allow a certain number of characters per player, and various other game mechanics are tied to players rather than characters. There are some rare instances where a member may wish to change accounts. If a username change is all that is desired, that can be easily accommodated through this link or by PMing a staffer. Should you want a whole new account, however, please let staff know that you had an old account and tell us which it was. We're fine with accounts being switched if there's a good reason or if it has been a long time since you were around and you want a fresh start. Many of our members have fallen into this category in the past. We need to know about it, though, so that we can track things like adoption eligibility, activity warnings, and staff notes/warnings between accounts, and also so that the old account can be locked as a security precaution. Running multiple accounts at once is effectively cheating, and will result in a ban. Changing accounts without notifying staff will be frowned upon heavily, and will result in a ban should it be determined that any inappropriate action was taken or that any notable advantage was gained. Otherwise, the offender will be warned and may face further consequences (up to and including a ban) depending on the circumstances and staff discretion. If multiple members are accessing the site from the same location (siblings, roommates, etc.) please let staff know right away. These situations can cause false positives in the system, and you’ll be in much better shape if staff is aware of your situation in advance. SOTF Mini Policy on Proxy Servers Due to several notable incidents of ban evasion, the staff team disallows the use of proxy servers to log into the site. This is not a decision we have made lightly, but it is our belief that it is the best option for the community as a whole. For those who do not know, proxy servers hide the location of your login. They provide no other real utility, and as such are most commonly used as a tool to evade security precautions. They are not the same thing as naturally refreshing IP addresses (which many countries and internet service providers utilize) and if your IP frequently changes for reasons besides proxy use, you have no cause for concern. We are implementing this rule to better allow us to quickly weed out potential security threats and spam accounts. The response/repercussions for handlers using a proxy will vary according to the situation, but if we have any reason to suspect that they are ban-evaders they will be banned as such. If you have any questions about this rule, or if you believe that you have a legitimate need to use a proxy to access our site, please PM Mini Help. We're very willing to discuss the situation and to make case-by-case exceptions given adequate reason; we simply want our official and default stance to be clear here. Contacting Staff Regarding Critiques You are always free to privately contact the staff member handling your critique to discuss any concerns with the critique you may have. There are, however, certain parameters here. Do not post arguments in your in-thread reply to a staffer's critique. Do not post to let them know it'll take a while for you to respond. Do not post for any reason other than to state that you have completed required edits or that you are forfeiting your character. Posting otherwise will, at best, get you bumped to the back of the critique queue and make your wait longer. It will not, however, result in your getting extra time to make edits. If you need to address any matters with the staff member critiquing you, do it by PM. You should always be polite when contacting staff members. The Mini staff team is entirely volunteer-run, and staff members tend to have very busy lives outside the site. The goal of staff in critiquing characters is to help you improve your character both as a whole and so as to better fit the style and worlds of Mini. If a staff member has made a factual error or an erroneous request (say, asking for a change in phrasing that is grammatically incorrect), you can absolutely ask them to reconsider their stance. Please provide as much information as you can (links are very helpful here) to showcase the error. If something is not clearly objectively wrong, but is more of an edge case or judgment call, that's fine too and you can still request the staff member reconsider. Again, please lay out your case in a polite and detailed fashion. The staff member will read and respond to your query as quickly as possible. If they do not change their mind, however, please respect that. Do not continue to argue once a staff member makes it clear that their decision is final. If you are still unsatisfied with the ruling, you can appeal to the staff team as a whole instead. Please do not contact staff members to ask them to write your character for you. If a staff member says your character needs more hobbies, or another disadvantage, or more detail to their family life, do not PM the staff member and ask them to come up with these things for you. Staff members are busy handling their own characters and dealing with many other critiques, so creative issues fall to you to solve. If you're really stumped, site members in chat can usually offer advice and feedback. Appealing Staff Decisions/Lodging Formal Complaints If you feel a staff member has made a decision unfairly, please bring your concerns to a different member of the staff team. Please lay out your case in as much detail as possible. The staff team as a whole will review your complaint and act as it sees fit. Note that you will likely not remain anonymous during this process. If you have concerns that you will face some sort of retribution, please note this as well in your initial complaint. If you feel you have faced retribution afterwards, please contact staff about this as a separate matter. The staff team will do its best to get the full story and understand the situation. You will not necessarily be notified of the outcome; it depends entirely on the situation. Generally speaking, you will always hear back on matters related to profiles or in-character or game-related situations. You will usually not hear back on disciplinary measures relating to other members or to staff, though if a member ends up banned it will be announced and if a staff member is removed from their position it will typically become immediately apparent. As forewarning: generally speaking, the staff team will not overturn a staff member's ruling unless we find clear evidence of the staff member being unfair or blatantly incorrect. If a staff member asks you to change something in your character's profile, the staff team will stand by that ruling unless the staff member has made a clearly erroneous ruling or is behaving unfairly towards you personally. That something was allowed to fly in another member's profile is no guarantee it will be allowed in yours; while the staff strives to keep critiques fair and comparable, profile approval is not an exact science and a large number of factors are always in play. In certain situations, a new staff member will take over your critique following an appeal. This is not guaranteed. You may not request to not be critiqued by any given staffer; staff members are expected to be professional, and a staff member who lets major bias show through instead of excusing themselves from handling your profile on their own shouldn't be on the team at all. Do not approach the staff team preemptively expressing concern over bias. The staff team is only interested in incidents that actually occur. In more serious cases, decisions will be made without the input of the staffer whose actions are being called into question. Note that, for practical purposes, there is almost no situation in which more than two staff members could conceivably be kept out of the decision-making process. In very extreme situations, the staff member at the focus of a complaint may not be informed until discussion has been completed and a decision made, but this is handled at the discretion of the rest of the team, not the person lodging the complaint. Please note that, unlike Main, Mini retains a tiered staff system, and the final decision in any given situation rests with the admins. There is potential for the admins to handle situations without the input of the rest of staff, though this is unlikely to ever occur except as a last-ditch resort. If you have issues with either admin, the other is the best first avenue of discussion, though you are free to approach a mod as well. If ever the admins disagree and there are no extenuating factors serving as tiebreak, the tiebreak defaults to Namira's stance, as she is site founder. Requesting Kills from Handlers of Rolled Characters Handlers who are not rolled should not post to the rolls thread to commiserate, to gloat, or to discuss the rolls. If something merits discussion, a thread may be started in RP Discussion for that (though these may not be started to request Heroes). Handlers who are not rolled are allowed to post in the rolls thread only if they have business related to the announcement, such as if they are playing a Hero Card. Handlers who are not rolled are never allowed to post to the roll thread asking for kills. Offending posts will be deleted, and further consequences may ensue for willful or repeat offenses. It is forbidden to send PMs to the handlers of rolled characters requesting kills unless the handler in question has expressly requested such PMs in the thread containing the rolls. This has been a recurrent, so the staff take it seriously. If you receive an unsolicited PM, feel free to report it to staff using the report function. Consequences will vary depending on intention and history, ranging from a warning to not engage in such behavior again to potentially severe punishments indeed. Requesting Hero Cards The handler of a rolled character may post one and only one time per thread in which they are rolled to request that their character be saved. They may post more than that to request death ideas, but staff would prefer that threads not be cluttered with repeated requests for saves, and in general it's fairly clear that a handler who has requested their character be saved still wants that unless they say otherwise. The only exception to this is if a handler is noting that they have selected a death idea and want no more PMs; in that case, they may toss in a quick "Would still love a save, though," as stating that the death is settled might imply otherwise. Handlers may not start threads in other parts of the board requesting Heroes. They are not allowed to PM other handlers asking for Heroes. If you receive unsolicited PMs requesting Heroes, please report them to the staff. Handlers should not agitate for Heroes in the Discord channel. A Hero request can take whatever form a handler desires, but any offers of recompense should be clearly in jest. Buying cards is against the spirit of Heroes and staff will do absolutely nothing to enforce any such deal, and will in fact remove any posts fishing for such a thing. Violation of any of these rules will carry, at the least, a warning. Depending on severity of violation, handler history, etc., the consequences may be markedly more severe. Required Reading One of the best ways to engage with SOTF Mini is to read widely, familiarizing yourself with games past and present and with the works of a wide variety of handlers. It's a great way to improve your own work and to make other handlers feel appreciated, and it's probably the best way to get an overall idea of a version's overall story. That said, it is not required. The only things you are required to read on SOTF Mini are: *These rules: If you're here, you're doing well! In fact, only the core rules are necessary in most situations, though the advanced rules should be consulted prior to asking staff for clarifications. *Important game and universe info for the game you are playing: This is all laid out in a special forum and includes special rules for each universe, daypack contents, a summary of the ways the universe differs from the real world, and more. All of this is necessary to engage accurately with the game and avoid continuity snarls. *All announcements for games you are playing: Both in-character and out-of-character announcements are important to read. They update handlers on rules and game progress, and the in-character ones are broadcast loudly throughout the arena, such that characters typically react to them. *The threads you are in: This should go without saying, but it is nigh-impossible to respond accurately and appropriately to posts you have not read. You should read in full any thread you wish to enter (such that you're able to properly assess what situation your character will find themselves in) as well as any posts made over the course of a thread you are in (such that you can acknowledge and respond to what happens). Category:Game Mechanics